This collection explores the wide range of Asian American heritage through primary sources—speeches, diary entries, editorials, advertisements, court opinions, legislation, songs, and poems—along with concise editorial commentary. It testifies both to the rapid expansion of the field of Asian American studies in the last decade and to the innovations in scholarship on Asian Americans in many fields, including Western history, feminist studies, political science, anthropology, and military history.

"[This book] provides an unparalleled collection of narrative and historiographical essays and a sweeping bibliography ... for scholars seeking to probe changing notions of what it means to be 'American' or understand interactions between East Asia and the United States over the past 200 years."—Pacific Affairs